A recent news item caught my eye – Facebook now has over 500 million members, a figure that makes it the most populated community in both the real and virtual worlds. It is this immense popularity of the web that has made marketers tap its potential as a valuable tool in selling their products and services, and if you’re not on this bandwagon, you’re losing out big time. The secret of success in online marketing is that it’s not enough to just enjoy a good start; unless you’re able to sustain your momentum, you’re likely to bite the dust. And to keep picking up speed and continue to sustain your online marketing efforts, here’s what you need to do:

• Change with the times: There’s no doubt that the web is taking on new avatars faster than we can keep up. There was a time when most communication took place through email. Today however, most people have moved to social media – it was the blogs that took over at first, and now they’ve had to make way for social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Marketers who still enjoy success are those
  who made the switch to social media when they realized its potential – the viral marketing effect alone is every marketer’s dream. So unless you change with the times, you’re going to be left behind.
• Don’t forget your existing customers: Some people are still dependent on their email for most communication, so it’s not uncommon to find people who stay away from social media because of the lack of privacy. So if you have customers who are not socially active on the net and prefer to limit themselves to email, it is your responsibility to keep them updated on your offers and other relevant information. Always remember that it’s not wise to ignore your existing customers in the pursuit of new ones.
• Remember the situation: An online customer support staff member of a company I don’t wish to name here saw the short end of my fuse on a call one day – I was trying to secure a refund of my money which had erroneously been paid into someone else’s insurance renewal account, and in the middle of briefing me about the refund policy, the guy tries to sell me a new policy. I did not know whether to be astounded at the audacity of the chap or to suffer his foolishness at not knowing the first thing about customer mentality. Never try to sell to an aggravated customer before addressing the bee in their bonnet if you want to enjoy continued success in the online marketing world.
• Listen to feedback: And finally, listen to what your customers and potential customers are saying, both explicitly and implicitly. If you don’t bother to ask for and analyze customer feedback, there’s no way you’re going to meet their needs. And when this happens, they have no qualms about switching to the competition. So keep your eyes and ears open, and if you see a need that is voiced by most of your customers, you must try and see if you can do it. Unless you listen to the voice of your customers (who are the reason you are still in business), you’re bound to fail.

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Bailey Digger, she writes on the topic of web design degree programs . She welcomes your comments at her email id: baileydigger189(@)gmail(.)com.

Dear Marketing,

I know we haven’t always gotten along. In fact, I’ve been pretty critical of you over the years.

I’ve complained that you’re not doing your part to get us business. I’ve blamed you when our new offerings fail to achieve their anticipated success. I’ve accused you of being out of touch with what’s really going on with our customers and prospects.

The truth is, I don’t want to be the fall guy when I don’t reach my numbers. You don’t either. In fact, you’ve been just as hard on me as I’ve been on you.

You’ve criticized my salespeople’s skills, telling everyone in the company that we’re unfamiliar with the concept of selling “value”. You’ve griped about our bonuses, whined about our expenses or grumbled that we don’t work hard enough.

Enough already. We need to stop this blame game or neither of us will be successful.

Personally, I’m out of patience. It’s harder than ever to reach our quotas, and I don’t see things getting any easier in the future – especially when I talk to the people who buy our products and services.

You may not realize this, but most of our prospects today suffer from a severe case of Frazzled Customer Syndrome. This is a debilitating condition brought on by excessive workloads, lack of down-time, information overload, no sleep and job-related stress.

…

To read the full, original article, go to
http://www.manticoretechnology.com/qmaguide/dload-qmag-s1-jkonrath.asp.

It takes only a few moments to demolish a customer relationship that took several years to build.  The best way to retain your existing customers is by being diligent in your everyday dealings.  Given below are the top 10 customer service turn offs (as researched by Global Response) and ways to turn these around to reinforce and strengthen your customer relationships.

Amateur Staff

Nothing irritates a customer more than a customer service representative with half-baked knowledge.  Even if you have a small team of customer service agents, it helps to train them adequately so that they can represent your company appropriately. It helps to understand that, each and every customer service agent is the face of your company for the customers, and hence should be knowledgeable enough to give correct information and provide suitable solutions.

Trying to Win an Argument:

You can certainly win an argument by defending your company and reacting to your customer’s complains, but you cannot win his loyalty by doing that. You can only win his allegiance and loyalty by empathizing and apologizing (and that holds true even when it is not your mistake!!).

Rigid Policies:

Sticking to stringent policies can be the fastest way to lose customers. Depending on the strength of the customer relationship, you should be willing to bend policies for him, or at least try to identify ways of bending policies to strengthen customer relationships.

Futile Commitments and Promises:

Only promise when you are hundred percent confident, that you will be able to deliver within the committed time. For some reason, if you realize that you cannot deliver within time, then have the courtesy to call your customer and inform him of the reason and the time when the commitment can be fulfilled.

Diffidence:

Any customer would like to do business with a company which is accessible. If you have not kept your customer informed about the point of contact during an hour of emergency, then it is more than a probability that he will soon shift his base to another company. If you want a customer to return to you, then you must provide him with accessibility and warmth.

Poor Acknowledgements:

If you fail to acknowledge your customers with appropriate comments, then your customers are bound to feel ignored and neglected, which will inadvertently lead to loss of business. If a customer is unhappy about a personal or professional loss, you should be caring enough to acknowledge and comment suitably.

Poor Records:

The same goes for titles as well. Referring to Mrs. Thomas as Mr. Thomas, or Mr. Jackson and Mr. Johnson is only going to worsen your bond with the customer. Constantly misspelled names and inappropriate titles discourage customers to come back to you.

Ignoring the Basics of Customer Service:

Simple acknowledgements such as “Thank You” and “Sorry” still mean a lot to majority of the customers.  If you ignore these basic phrases, you can be quite sure of losing your existing customers.

Call shuffling:

This is indeed the worst and the most common customer service turn off. If a customer’s call is being transferred from department to department, and if no one is ready to take the responsibility, then it turns off even the most patient customer. On the contrary, if you are able to provide your customer with ‘First Contact Resolution’, then you can be assured of a returning customer.

Apathy and Failure to Listen:

Last but not the least, apathy and failures to listen are two of the most unforgivable customer service mistakes, and are often taken seriously by customers. Sometimes, you can simply make your customers day by listening to him attentively.

In today’s tech-oriented, increasingly uncongenial business world, you can win the hearts and loyalty of your customers by avoiding the above 10 customer service turn offs.

Now let’s carry over this analogy to the world of social media – with the plethora of social networking options that are available today, it’s hard to pick just one to stay connected to your friends. And while some of your friends are on one site, others are scattered across the world of social media. So you have no choice but to get on to those sites as well if you want to stay in touch. But considering that you cannot be online on all of them at the same time unless you’re on a PC or notebook and can open multiple windows and IM clients, messaging when you’re on the move becomes a chore. It’s like having to visit several different ice cream parlors to eat all that you want to eat.

But with the arrival of IM chat clients, it’s like you can put all your social media eggs in one basket and carry it around on your smartphone. Services like Nimbuzz, Fring and eBuddy allow you to integrate all your social networks into one common platform. So you’re always online and always accessible to your friends no matter which social network they’re on. You can consolidate your accounts on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM, Skype, ICQ, Gadu-Gadu and Hyves onto a single platform and see which of your friends are online through the indicator against their screen names. Also, you know which network they’re on by the logo of the social page that’s displayed alongside their name.

Most IM clients for your phone allow you to not only carry on text chats in real time but also provide voice calls over VoIP as well. However, this works only if both parties have the same VoIP platform (Nimbuzz users can call others who are on Nimbuzz and so on); if the call has to terminate at a landline or a mobile phone, you have to pay a nominal amount. Besides this, you can send pictures and other files as well to all your contacts while you’re on the go. With cameras on phones becoming more sophisticated and feature-rich, this is a great way to share pictures of places and people with your loved ones (once you try it, you get hooked to this instant sharing thing if my experience is anything to go by).

Most IM chat clients for your phone are free, and unless you sign up for services that enable you to call telephone numbers, you pay only for your GPRS data plan from your mobile service provider (with WiFi, you eliminate even this cost). A great way to stay in touch, wouldn’t you agree?

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Shannon Wills, she writes on the topic of Internet Provider . She welcomes your comments at her email id: shannonwills23@gmail.com.

Like anything else in life there are pros and cons in actually building a website for your gambling affiliate program that actually makes money.  The pros are it can be a really easy way to make money and you don’t need a lot of money to get things going.

Cons could include not making any money at all because no one knows your site even exists and not being able to make a decent amount of money because you chose a bad gambling affiliate program to work with.

There are a lot of different things that go into creating a website that actually convinces your potential visitors to do something.  You will want to do some extensive online research here to ensure your site doesn’t fall by the wayside like so many other sites do.  You want to have a site that actually makes money, so make sure you know what you need to do to accomplish this.

The next you want to be sure of is the gambling affiliate program you decide to sign up with and work with.  Look for things like credibility and reputation of the company in question you are looking at.  Consider and compare things like how much commission you actually stand to make with one sigh-up.

For example, while Amazon is an extremely reputable company, the commission they pay out for their affiliate program is only 5%.  Imagine how many people you’d need to bring to your site and how many books you’d actually have to sell to even make a tiny dent in your wallet.

Start with these basics here and you should be on your way to actually doing something with both your website and the gambling affiliate program you decide to work with.  At the very least this should help as a guide in deciding what you need to do by doing some research before you jump into anything unexpected.

The biggest mistake they make is to fail to understand their customers, both existing and potential. They try to market what they have rather than what the customer needs. They try to fit the customer to their products rather than trying to fit their products to the customer. And when they continue to do this, they lose their customers and don’t gain any new ones.

Consider the case of two salesmen who knock at your door; the first is selling books, but you cannot read because you are blind. But he still insists you buy them just so you can line your bookshelves. The second salesman too sells books, but when he sees that you’re blind, he is apologetic and sensitive. Also, he returns again the next day to sell you some Braille books. Now which of the two would you buy from? The answer is a no-brainer.

But unfortunately, most marketers are like Salesman No.1; they fail to move beyond their original sales spiel and are unable to change track when the straight and familiar path is somehow blocked. They do not try to find a window in the wall that is hindering them; rather they bang their heads against it in the hope that it will open. And they are more focused on the sale than the customer, little realizing that without the latter, the former is just not happening.

That is why we have repeated instances of “in-your-face” marketing where customers are flooded with emails and messages whether they want them or not; that is why they promise much but only flatter to deceive; and that is why they continue with what they have to say without stopping once to listen to the voice of the customer.

Marketers need to wake up to the fact that customers are becoming a more demanding group because of the numerous choices they have. They need to understand that unless they can lift their quality of service, they are going to lose out on even the smallest piece of the pie. And they need to know that if they don’t evolve with the changing times and make the customer a vital part of the sales equation, they are forever doomed to failure.

By-line:

This article is contributed by Susan White, who regularly writes on the subject of Internet Service. She invites your questions, comments at her email address: susan.white33@gmail.com.

Google is famous for their modified logos on special days of the year. This day, however, google.com is dead bare.

Looks like yahoo.com takes the cake with this one. They went all out!

Thanks Yahoo. We appreciate the enthusiasm. Google, maybe next year .

As a follow up to GoDaddy.com Promo Code 2009, I realized it needed some updating.  For those of you who find themselves fans of  GoDaddy.com (or half-naked IndyCar driver, Danica Patrick), then it’s time to save money. It’s a tough economy which means “Coupons” and “Promo Codes” are 100% necessary. Just think what you could do with the $2.50 you’ll save when you type in gofivgind2. That’s a Burger King feast right there!

FatWallet vs. LiveCodes

There are currently 2 players that come up when you search “GoDaddy Coupon Codes”: FatWallet and LiveCodes. I found a pretty good list on FatWallet -  half the codes go inactive very quickly, though the forum itself is constantly being updated. Here’s the top of the list:

• cjc749fat – $7.49 .COMs (exp 5/31/10)
• cjcfat30 – $5 Off w/ $30 Purchase (exp 5/31/10)
• cjcfat50 – $10 Off w/ $50 Purchase (exp 5/31/10)
• cjcfat75 - 15% Off w/ $75 Purchase (exp 5/31/10)
• cjcfat10 – 10% off any purchase (exp 5/31/10)
• cjcfat20h – 20% off Shared Hosting (exp 5/31/10)

LiveCodes pretty much listed the same codes, but they have 1 up on FatWallet. Due to their blogging platform, it’s easier to find out if these codes are fresh or old news. Just look at the day it was posted.

Expiration

I anticipate that even these codes will go expired soon. That being said, feel free to check out the original sites or simply post comments below with updated codes. Either way works for me. Now go save some money!

Here’s a very good example of putting viral techniques to good use…

Who? What? Why?

The SSRP (Sussex Safer Roads Partnership), in South East England, is currently promoting Embrace Life, a campaign designed to remind individuals of the importance of wearing their seat belts.  Started in February 2010, it has quickly become an internet phenomenon. Embrace Life broke 1 million views in less than two weeks, is being shown in front of James Cameron and BIll Gates at the Ted.com conference in Long Beach, California, and may also be screened on international TV stations from the Arabic Gulf to Canada, the USA to France. It currently sits at 5.8 Million views on YouTube and growing daily!

If you haven’t seen Embrace Life yet, log onto the dedicated website – www.embracethis.co.uk and don’t forget to join the Facebook group set up by one viewer to lobby for Embrace Life to appear on national TV!

For an average individual to be offended by facebook is rare, but for someone like my wife (I love you), who spends more time on Facebook than with me, it’s easily possible. In fact, she spends more time on Facebook than most people spend  working at their day job (probably because they’re on facebook too!).

What Did Facebook Do To Piss Her Off?

Having only been married for less than a year, my wife was simply doing what any newlywed would do…try to see what it’ll be like to have a kid with her new last name (Russak). She picks the name “Layla Zehava Russak” (…solid choice if I may say so). As protocol, she decides to see if there was anyone on Facebook with the name already.

She enters in the search and find her result: Uncle-Semit.com’s Shitler’s List Vol. 18…

Facebook Anti-Semitic Search Result

I didn’t believe it myself, but there it was…a Bing! generated result that couldn’t have been any more irrelevant and offensive.

Freedom of Speech Applies To The Internet…

Now I’m facing a huge dilemma. My wife is pissed off at Facebook for offending her, while I’m trying to figure out how this happened and if it can be stopped from happening again. And the answer is simply “No!”.  The right to freedom of speech is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). International, national and regional standards recognise that freedom of speech, as one form of freedom of expression, applies to any medium, including the Internet.

Unfortunately, it seems as if search engines are not allowed to censor information in the US as it’s integral to upholding the idea of “Free-Speech”. As a result, Facebook using Bing! search results means anything goes.

…But It Still Pissed Off My Wife!

Whether or not it’s legal…doesn’t make a difference to my wife. It still pissed her off. And as I stated in my last article, “Facebook, thanks to you my wife is unhappy…and if my wife is unhappy, then I’m unhappy.” Yet another week on the couch. I should write an article “How Facebook Ruined My Sex Life” (…though they do have a Facebook group here)

In this case, Facebook may claim “Freedom of Speech”, but here’s the issue. Bing! is only a last result for when a Search Result can’t be located. Facebook needs to get smarter about the results Bing! pulls up. Otherwise, one day a child is going to try and find a name that doesn’t exist and  get XXX related search results instead.

Thanks a lot Facebook.